Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Film 1: A Day Made of Glass 2

This film is doing more than visualizing education. It is visualizing a way of interacting with our environment as a whole. For example, whilst the school children learn through the various devices, the doctors treat patients using similar devices. Technology is portrayed as a medium that enhances and augments reality. In this respect technology is presented as wholly benign, beneficial and within our control. It is there to serve our purposes. One might - if one did not think to any real degree - be left with the impression that technology is exactly what we need to make our lives better. 

It is interesting that there is no speech in this film. Perhaps it would have distracted from the message that technology itself is a medium of communication. In the case of the school children we see the "technology communication information" about, for example colors and nature. The teacher and the park ranger both seem almost superfluous. It is as though they might be removed with no real loss to the childrens' education. The case is different with the doctors as they need to, for example, interpret the results of the scans. However, it does not take much of an imaginative leap to imagine the doctors as absent with machines interpreting the results and carrying out the surgery.

This is a very Utopian view with the sickeningly perfect family finding their lives enhanced by everything that is available to them. The doctors are empowered through the use of technology. However, it is not difficult to move to a dystopian perspective. In this imagined future world there will be the "haves" and the "have nots" a fact which is already a reality in terms of access to technology. Again from a dystopian perspective this technology can be seen as removing us from the real. Notice how the display in the park almost seems like a barrier to the park itself. When the children find the footprint they take a photograph and are immediately provided with the an image of the animal that created the print. Apparently no thinking required.

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